Physical Manifestations
by LaedieDuske
Summary: Just a bit of self-indulgence with an unconscious Dean and my OC Ren.


**A/N Prompted by a conversation I had with a friend a couple of years back. I like guys with scars and I was feeling like a freak for it. As I was telling her this, she interrupted me with, "You are a warrior and scars are physical manifestations of strength and courage." She went on to say they are visible proof that you have survived something and she was not surprised that I put value on that considering the things I have survived. Considering how many scars I have of my own, I guess it's a good thing I find them sexy. :-)**

"Look Sam, I can either stay here and change his dressings, wait for him to wake up and take care of him if he does _OR_ you can be the one to explain to him why _I_ am driving his _baby_." I watched as he flinched and his face paled a little at the second scenario. "I understand why you want to be here, I do. But it's not like you're leaving him in the care of a stranger. I promise, I won't hurt him while you're gone."

He finally tore his stare away from his brother's unconscious form, turning startled eyes toward me, "What? Ren, no! I know you wouldn't, it's just - "

"Sam. Go." I cut him off, smiling. I was rewarded with a chuckle.

"I know, I know, go so I can get back. Besides, you probably hadn't ought to be out and about around here anyway. You sure you'll be alright?"

"I have dealt with worse things than your brother, believe me." I ignored the rest of what he had said and he let me.

"Yeah, well, you haven't seen him badly injured." The _until now_ hung unspoken as he frowned and turned concerned eyes back to his brother.

"Sam..."

He took a deep breath, nodded, and finally left to pick up supplies.

We had been stuck in the hotel for two days, one of us awake at all times taking turns watching over Dean.

The guys had tracked the manticore to its lair in the woods while I played the role of research monkey for this outing. (We had strayed too close to my home territory and I was under lockdown, so sayeth Dean and Sam Winchester and thus it was law.) Luckily, they located the creature as it got the drop on some hikers and not so luckily Dean threw himself in harm's way to save them. Sam staggered in that night carrying Dean over his shoulders, both of them bathed in blood. Dean hadn't woken since the attack.

With a sigh I flicked on the inside light and prepared the gauze, bandages, antiseptic swabs, ointment and a handful of other items which I set on the table between the beds. I went into the bathroom and scrubbed my hands with the antibacterial soap and dried with disposable towels. It was the closest we could get to sterilizing. I carefully sat on the edge of the bed and peeled the covers down to his hips.

Dean's breathing was even, but still too shallow for my liking. He was pale from blood loss and the poison that had ravaged his system before we could get the anti-venom into him.

We had the heat on for him, though it was not yet into the cooler end of Fall. We had agreed to not bother putting a shirt on him once we got the shredded one off to tend to his injuries, but with his fever we didn't want him getting chilled. He still shivered and winced when I uncovered him, and I felt a stab of guilt.

With one hand behind his head and one around his ribs, wrapping as far around his back as I could reach without bumping his wounds, I carefully sat him up and leaned him forward into me. I unwrapped the bandage holding the dressings in place and then gently laid him back down. I peeled off the dressings for the two long gashes running from his left collarbone to the bottom of his ribs on his right side, then I took off the smaller dressing under his right collarbone where the poison stinger had gone in.

The gashes looked fairly good all things considered. No infection and no bleeding since the day before when he had struggled in the throes of a high fever and broken them open again. It was a good thing we had not stitched them closed, allowing them to drain naturally to reduce the risk of infection from the creature's claws. That would have been a hell of a lot of re-stitching.

The venom puncture was purple and red, inflamed and angry looking. We had given him the anti-venom once he was back at the hotel, though, and with his fever down from boiling-his-brain to merely running a temp it looked like he was going to be okay.

I think that was why I could suddenly see the _body_ I was working on and not just the _injuries_. As I cleaned his new wounds, I took a mental inventory.

He had a small cluster of oddly spaced round scars near his left collarbone, one of which was bisected by the one of the new wounds. Bullet holes I would wager - I had seen more than a few in my day. Hell, I had a couple of my own. He looked like he belonged on the far end of a target range, though. There was another one on his left deltoid, and a couple of longer deep scars on the outside of his arm which looked like graze wounds but might have been deep tears. How often had this poor guy been shot at? I shook my head as I moistened the swabs with peroxide.

On his right side, near his new puncture wound, there were four more round scars. With the spacing and positioning it looked to me as though something with talons had tried to pick him up by his shoulder. I was willing to bet when I sat him up again, if I paid attention, I would see at least a single matching wound on his shoulder-blade.

He had so many other scars crisscrossing his arms from shoulder to wrist I didn't even bother counting. They ranged from still stitched closed on his right deltoid (mental note: those would probably have to come out soon) to white lines faded with years of road dust.

His new wounds were cleaned and I started to carefully dab antibiotic ointment on them.

I counted three scars on the right side of his rib cage ranging up, down, left and right. They varied in length from four inches to roughly nine inches. His left side was similarly burdened except there were four scars and the longest was closer to an even foot. That one wrapped around front to back and I hoped he had actually found his way to a hospital for that one. I was pretty positive that was not a question I wanted an answer to.

There were at least two surgical scars I could pick out on his stomach, the stitches that had been used for those were distinctively hospital issue. One low and to the right of his bellybutton, the other higher up and toward the middle. Both were three inches or more. Whatever had happened, it had been bad.

On the left side of his stomach, a couple inches over and slight higher than his navel, was another rounded scar. It was larger than the bullet wounds. It looked to me like he had been staked at some point, and the thought sent a cold shiver up my spine. There were a few other scars scattered about his torso, but my eyes kept wandering back to that one.

"You okay?" he rasped and I jumped. I realized I had put the gauze on his wounds and had been sitting with my hand resting on his stomach, cataloging scars.

"I...yeah...I'm fine. Hey, can you stay awake for me for a minute?" I was flustered and embarrassed looking into those barely-open green eyes. "You've been running a fever, I need you to take some Tylenol for me please?" I made it a request so he would not feel cornered. It occurred to me that Sam usually did the Dean wrangling and he would likely not take them, but I had to try.

"Mmkay." Barely a whisper, but I scrambled for the pills and some water before he changed his mind.

I carefully lifted his head up enough that he would not choke and helped him down the pills, then tried to make him as comfortable as possible. I hesitated for a moment, and decided it might be best to tape the gauze pads down instead of jostling him upright while he was awake. I started tearing off chunks of tape and securing the white squares to his abused chest, still feeling a bit self-conscious.

"Hey Ren?" His voice was so rough it hurt to hear it.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

With that, he was out again. But at least I could tell Sam he had been awake, and he had taken some medicine. Hopefully that was his first step out of the woods.


End file.
